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In Through the Turnstile Gate, the last poem in her thoughtful new collection, Reading the Flowers (Arc Publications, £8.99), Linda France asks plaintively, 'Who's to say / on which side of the gate the dream begins?' Who, indeed? 'At the end of November snow fell, / snow like no one had seen before; / an Eden lost while the sky slept. // The old tree couldn't bear the weight / of its white coverlet, creaking till its trunk / and branches split, exposed the chilled bones / of a dying year'.